Stravaganza: City Of Secrets Part 30

'Fire! Fire! The city is on fire!'

Matt heard a groan in the darkness. It was Rodolfo.

'Stravaganti! To me! To me! Arianna and Cesare, if you can hear me, take the Manoush to the gate with the others. All Stravaganti to me we must save the city from the flames!'

'You go,' Ludo told Matt. 'I will help the others.'

Matt took out a small velvet bag and gave it to the Manoush. 'Here,' he said. 'I won't need to tell your father what you said, now, whoever he may be. But it would have been true. You faced death bravely.'

He clapped Ludo on the shoulder then plunged back into the city.

Flames were licking at the edges of wooden buildings. There was so much that was combustible about the city. Rodolfo led the others to the cathedral square where the wide open s.p.a.ce in front was so far free of fire.

'Don't they have a fire brigade or something?' Matt asked Luciano. They were both panting and had black smudges on their faces. 'You look like as much of a printer's devil as I do,' said Matt.

'There is a fire team,' said Constantin, 'financed by the city. But the University has taken the money for equipment and spent it on salaries for professors. I'm afraid that Padavia will burn if we don't do something.'

He turned his face away, frightened for his books and ma.n.u.scripts and his wooden presses. He did not want the other Stravaganti to see the tears on his face. After all, the Manoush had been saved and that was the most important thing.

'But we can do something,' said Rodolfo. 'Is there not a swamp in the south of the city?'

'Yes,' said Luciano. 'Enrico lodges near there.'

'That is indeed the nearest water supply,' said Constantin. 'But without enough firemen, no chain of buckets could reach the centre. The University will soon be in flames.'

'To the swamp, then,' said Rodolfo.

They sprinted as fast as they could. Luciano, still not recovered from the di Chimicis' poison, was by now running on adrenalin alone. He didn't know how much more he had to give.

In the south of the city, the oval swamp lay still under the obscured moon. It was an unhealthy place, full of biting insects and noxious smells. The five Stravaganti stopped at its northern edge.

'Now,' said Rodolfo. 'Unless you have a better idea, Dottore, I propose we lift this rotten marsh and lay it over the centre of the city like a wet handkerchief.'

'My owne thoughte exactly!' said the Doctor.

Matt felt hysterical with exhaustion.

'That's fine then,' he said. 'We'll just do that, shall we? Shouldn't be much of a problem.'

Constantin put an arm on his shoulder.

'Now you will see what the power of thought can do,' he said. 'What the Stravaganti are capable of. What you are capable of.'

Rodolfo made them all stand in a line on the edge of the swamp, the two younger ones each flanked by the older Stravaganti.

'Concentrate!' said Rodolfo. 'Lock minds.'

Matt felt a jolt through his head that felt like being struck by lightning.

'Now,' said Rodolfo. 'We don't want the city to burn. We don't want it to die instead of the Manoush. Our friends are safe. Now we must save Padavia. Think of the swamp.'

Matt's mind filled with the image of the green, rank-smelling oval.

'There is enough water and weed here to smother the fire,' said Rodolfo. 'Think of it. Slimy green sludge coating the flames, cutting off the air that feeds them. Now, everyone at once, take the swamp and put it where it's needed.'

Matt felt panic rising in his throat as he visualised the wet green ma.s.s rising, rising from its quiet bed and moving above him. What if his concentration should fail and the swamp fall on them? They would all be drowned. But the Stravaganti had linked arms, without his being aware of it, and being between Constantin and Dethridge gave him courage.

He was caught up in something much bigger than himself now and couldn't have stopped if he wanted to. Slowly, he felt the ma.s.s of water move towards the fire.

The citizens of Padavia were rus.h.i.+ng around in panic. As soon as they had realised that the city was on fire, they had abandoned the Manoush and the bonfires. It was doubtful that they even knew the prisoners had been rescued. Some ran uselessly to wells to fetch buckets of water but the fire had taken hold on some wooden buildings near the market and was already beyond suppression by such small-scale efforts.

Other householders had decided to flee and were leaving their houses with bags and bundles. But the city was still dark, the moon's face hidden from its people, so that citizens blundered into one another, set off in the wrong direction, lost one another in the choking smoke and darkness.

Biagio the printer had run to the Scriptorium, aware of the damage to all the papers and books, secret and public, that the fire could do. He had rescued his Manoush and put them into the hands of the disguised d.u.c.h.essa of Bellezza but nothing would persuade him to leave his city while it burned.

There was no sign of the Professor and Biagio didn't know what to do for the best. He pulled out a key to the Scriptorium and was about to go in, willing to die alongside the wooden presses rather than abandon his post.

But then he sensed a strange new smell on the air. Above the fiery reek coming from the smouldering buildings about to burst into flames, came a dank, stifling stench like the very worst of open drains or swampy marshland. Biagio stared up at the sky and rubbed his eyes.

He couldn't see anything because of the hidden moon but he sensed an even darker shadow crossing her face an impossibly large oval shape moving slowly across the heavens. And the smell was coming from that shape. It seemed to hover in the air for a few moments before rus.h.i.+ng down towards the centre of the city like a black cloud of swamp gas.

Other citizens had noticed it now and stood staring up at the sky. Neither they nor Biagio understood what they were seeing; some were inclined to think it was the end of the world and to lay down their bundles and themselves in the cobbled streets and give themselves up to their fate.

But Biagio realised that whatever was coming presented a new danger and flung open the door to the Scriptorium, calling everyone on Salt Street to take cover. Soon the silent presses were surrounded by a crowd of babbling hysterical Padavians. As Biagio slammed the door shut, a weight of water and weed fell on the city, pouring past the window like a slimy green rain.

The streets were awash with foul-smelling water, reeds and the occasional startled fish. Padavians ran in all directions, seeking shelter from the water in buildings they had shunned a short time before, when they were afraid of being trapped by fire.

The five Stravaganti had walked slowly in a line from the site of the swamp to the centre of the city, carrying the weight of water above and before them until Rodolfo, at one end of the line, gave the order to lower the swamp over the heart of the fire.

Matt felt the intolerable strain of lowering the swamp slowly enough to avoid drowning the citizens but he was aware of their not holding it firmly enough. It seemed to slip from their minds and land on the burning city with a sound like a magnified sigh. And then the whole of Padavia steamed and hissed like a giant bonfire in a thunderstorm.

Arianna paused at the gate to look back over the city. At first she could see nothing. The moon was still dark and there were no torches burning. That was right: there were no flames of any kind. It was as if the whole city had been snuffed out by a blanket.

'The fire's gone out,' she said to Ludo, who had come to stand beside her.

'They've done it then,' he said. 'Saved the city as well as us.'

'You must get away,' said Arianna. 'Get all your people into the carts.'

'Aren't you coming with us?' asked Ludo.

'Of course,' said Arianna.

And she turned away from the gate. It had never been harder but she knew that her duty was to get the Manoush back to Bellezza. Yet every nerve screamed to her to run back to Luciano and the others, to check that they were all safe.

'I'm sure they're all right,' said a familiar voice at her shoulder. It was Cesare.

As he came to stand by her, the moon slowly began appear again.

And by the time they were on the road to the coast, she had come out of the red shadow and was s.h.i.+ning down on her people, clear and silver, with all stain of blood and fire wiped from her face.

Acknowledgements .

I want to thank Nigel Roche, Curator of the St Bride's Print Museum in the City of London, for his patient help and answering of queries about sixteenth century printing processes, and Dr Martin Maw, Archivist at the Oxford University Press for additional help and comments. The demonstration of a wooden press in action at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp was a revelation. Thanks too to Mafra Gagliardi and her family for their interest and hospitality in Padua, Rose Sharp for her expert help on dyslexia, Alison Debenham for providing the invaluable plot-planning template and, as always, the completely wonderful London Library.

Epilogue:New Beginnings The Manoush stayed in Bellezza till Christmas. They had a festival around that time too. A lot had changed since the first night of their rescue, when they had all congregated in the courtyard of the Ducal Palace to complete their rites for the Day of the Dead. It was Ottavio who convinced them that this was the right thing to do and it was true that, by daybreak, the Manoush were all sleeping peacefully on their bedrolls and the shadowy shapes that had travelled with them from Padavia were no more to be seen.

'We can't keep them all here,' Silvia told Arianna. 'How are pet.i.tioners to get through the courtyard? Or Senators and Councillors to come into the palace?'

'I don't think they will stay,' said Arianna, who was looking down on the sleeping travellers from the stone gallery on the first floor. 'They needed a refuge after their ordeal in Padavia and somewhere to carry out their rituals but I think now that they will make their own arrangements in this city as they do in any other.'

She thought that she would never forget that night journey under the full moon. Getting the Manoush to understand that they must all travel by water to the lagoon city and then ferrying them to the Piazzetta in the fleet of mandolas that Silvia had waiting for them. And all the time not knowing if Luciano and her father and their other friends had escaped the fire.

Cesare had been wonderful and, surprisingly, so had Enrico the spy. Biagio was the only one of the rescuers, apart from the Stravaganti, who had not travelled with them. Once the Manoush had been loaded into the carts, the pressman had hurried back to the Scriptorium, as anxious as Constantin about the presses and all the printed paper.

Just before dawn, Arianna had arrived, filthy and weary in her room, but before she woke Barbara to change places with her, she had run to Rodolfo's mirrors. And there they were, Rodolfo, Luciano and William Dethridge, all waiting up to send her the thought message she needed: City saved. No one harmed.

But she did not understand the next one: Padavia a bit wet and smelly.

She thought back as hard as she could: Manoush all safe too.

The two older Stravaganti disappeared out of the mirror and she was left looking at Luciano's face. It was much easier to think-speak to just one person.

You look exhausted. Go to bed. I love you.

They sent the same message.

Before Christmas there was a wedding in Bellezza. Not in the great silver-domed basilica but a quieter affair, in the d.u.c.h.essa's private chapel. The bride wore a silver brocade dress that now had a white lace bodice where once there had been a bloodstained tear. In her hair, at her throat and ears glinted diamonds and amethysts, worth all the money her family had earned for generations. These were presents from her mistress the d.u.c.h.essa, who had also promised the couple one of the four spotted African cubs who had been born to the newly named Flora the week before.

Barbara's father had died some years earlier, so Rodolfo walked her up the short aisle to where Marco waited for her. She had no bridesmaids, but Luciano and Arianna stood as witnesses to the marriage and signed their names on the marriage certificate: Arianna Maddalena Rossi, d.u.c.h.essa of Bellezza and Luciano Davide Crinamorte, Cavaliere of Bellezza.

'Us next,' whispered Arianna as she handed the pen to him.

At the party which followed a whole band of Manoush played flutes and harps and tambourines. They would not forget that Marco had been one of the rescuers who had led them out of captivity in Padavia. He and all their other saviours were honorary Manoush, as far as they were concerned.

The tall flute-player with the rusty-brown hair was particularly energetic, playing jigs and galliards with vigorous abandon. Chief among the dancers was Doctor Dethridge, twirling his wife Leonora round the palace ballroom with the enthusiasm of a man a third his age. But Luciano and Arianna were not far behind them.

'It's so good to have you home,' said Arianna. 'Must you go back to Padavia?'

'Well, I'm not a fully-fledged aristocrat yet,' said Luciano smiling down on her. 'My Rhetoric might be all right but apparently my Grammar and Logic still need a lot of work.'

'How much Grammar and Logic do you need to be my Duke Consort?' asked the young d.u.c.h.essa.

'Oh, I don't know,' said Luciano. 'Two terms' worth, they think.'

'So we can't get married till the summer?'

'It will be nicer then, won't it?' said Luciano. 'Why don't we do it just after your next Marriage with the Sea?'

'Then we'll be like my parents,' said Arianna.

'I can think of worse role models,' said Luciano, watching Silvia and Rodolfo lead a stately pavane, while Ludo took a break to drink some wine. He was surrounded, as usual by a gaggle of girls, some Manoush, some not, who seemed to find him irresistible.

'Let's announce it, anyway,' said Luciano, suddenly tired of all the secrecy. 'I want all the world to know.'

The week before Christmas Matt pa.s.sed his driving test, first time. Triumphantly he brandished his IOU at Jan and Andy as soon as he got back.

'Ouch,' said Andy. 'Right before Christmas.'

'It can be my present,' said Matt.

'But we've already got you one,' said Jan.

'What did you say in the Golden Dragon?' asked Matt. 'You said "On your eighteenth birthday or when you pa.s.s your test, whichever is sooner." That sounds pretty conclusive to me. And I have witnesses.'

'Hey, that's not fair,' objected Harry. 'Can I have an extra Christmas present worth hundreds of pounds?'

'You can have a car when you pa.s.s your test, like Matt,' said Andy. 'Or maybe we'll insure you to drive his.'

'No way am I sharing a car with Harry,' said Matt. 'I'll be at university by the time he pa.s.ses, anyway.'

'Stop teasing him, Andy,' said Jan.

'Come on then,' said Andy and took them round the corner to where he had parked a second-hand silver Toyota two days before. 'I knew you'd pa.s.s,' he told Matt, handing him the keys.

It was a car Matt had shown Andy on the forecourt of the local garage the week before and he couldn't believe his luck.

'Can I drive it now?' he asked. 'Am I insured?'

'Yes,' said Jan. 'At a premium you wouldn't believe, with a huge excess, so just go carefully.'